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Alienated ‘angry’ Muslim youth no mystery

This is an image obtained by The Associated Press which shows an unidentified detainee standing on a box with a bag on his head and wires attached to him in this late 2003 file photo at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq.

GULF NEWS – Obama’s ‘soft’ intervention is a nonstarter in the region given the West’s insensitivity towards addressing the hopelessness and humiliation that Muslims have suffered.

Interventionism is once more permeating American foreign-policy thinking in the Middle East. This time around, however, it is ‘soft’ intervention, although it is laden with the same kind of language and misleading references. But it seems that the American government has learned so very little since the last botched effort at remaking the Middle East to its liking.

On June 26, the White House asked Congress for $1.5 billion to bolster ‘stability’ in Syria’s neighbours — Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey. A third of that amount will be dedicated to train ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels for the purpose of fighting the Syrian army and its allies on one hand and holding back the growing influence of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the other. The ISIL is in control of large parts of Iraq.[…]Indeed, it was the US-led western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that drew the battle lines in the Middle East like never before — lines that the Americans, and now the Israelis, are desperately attempting to redraw. However, policymakers, no matter how astute, often forget — or rather ignore — the underlining reasons behind violent phenomena. Even worse, they exploit the violence to further their political and strategic interests, despite the fact that it means more violence.

When Baghdad fell in April 2003, and as American soldiers so conceitedly drowned Baghdad with their flags, millions of already alienated and angry Arab and Muslim youth felt that their countries had reached the lowest depths of humiliation…

Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

* * *I don’t buy it. The Muslims are always angry no matter what we do. Some are angry because we didn’t intervene in Syria. We can never make them happy. So why bother even trying?

It is honour-shame society. Their “honour” is under threat at the drop of a hat. They incessantly talk about being “humiliated” (that is a clue right there of the honour-shame component).